My thoughts on the film Dinner In America

So apparently this indie movie has been trending on Tiktok or so I heard but I wouldn’t know for sure since I’m not on there much but that’s what one of my online friends had told me. They said that I’d enjoy this movie and after viewing the trailer and eventually finding a good site to watch it on, I gave it a shot and oh boy do I have some things to say about it.

Heads up as there will be spoilers ahead so read at your own risk.

The storyline

Now the storyline is pretty well, idk it’s okay. The sort of main plot of the story is that Simon (the punk guy) is trying to escape from the police and he does this by settling at Patty’s house who he meets in an alleyway. The two have apparently met before as they used to go to the same college at one point. They go to Patty’s house, her mom comes home shocked obviously and they all have dinner together which eventually all comes crashing down when Simon decides to leak the secret that Patty’s brother is adopted. 

They two hide in Patty’s room and she brings up the favour Simon owes her from earlier to which she says she wants him to bring him to The Alliance concert coming not because she wants to see that band but Psyops who’s opening for them. Simon declines and says that would never happen cuz The Alliance are a bunch of poseurs and he’s in disbelief that Patty’s such a big fan of the band before it all clicks and he finally makes the realisation that Patty is the girl that has been sending him love letters but what Patty doesn’t know is that Simon is the lead singer of Psyops who goes by the alias John Q. 

Simon panics and escapes through the bathroom window and meets up with his band yelling and asking them about being an opening band for The Alliance which he strongly disagrees with. He goes back to the house and enters Kevin’s (Patty’s brother) room before getting ambushed by the guy. They both then decide to calm down by smoking weed together (uh okay…). 

After this I sort of forget which comes first but basically we’re met with some of the guys who have been bullying Patty from the start of the film, Simon gets beat up by them before taking revenge on the two by doing some pretty crazy stuff. They also go to the pet store where Patty used to work at to demand a check she never got. Then they go to a diner to have lunch and the day ends with an arcade scene as Mac Demarco’s song My Kind Of Woman plays in the background.

The next day I think is when the concert happens. Both of them sneak into Simon’s home because apparently he’s not really welcome there and they uh, do a couple stuff in the basement he hangs out in which is also when Simon confesses to her that he is in fact John Q from Psyops. They record song together using one of the letters Patty wrote to him as the lyrics before the family finds out he’s down there. An argument happens and boom bam badabing we’re at the concert now.

Psyops play for a while before members of the band I think (?) snitch on him by calling the cops since he’s wanted for a big reward and stuff. Simon gets caught and says goodbye to Patty. Patty is then approached by some of her old friends who offer her to join their riot grrrl band. Fast forward and we see a sequence of Simon writing to Patty, she reads the letter on the bus and starts yelling at some girls who were bothering and bullying her or something and that is pretty much where the film ends.

My opinions 

Look Dinner In America is not a bad movie, it really isn’t but I genuinely had hoped for something a lot better. It feels really indie for one thing and I just know Tumblr would’ve eaten this up a couple years back but right now it just feels incredibly overhyped.

The characters are okay. I don’t have too much of a problem with Patty when I really think about it to be honest but it’s Simon that I kinda despise. He’s pretty much a jerk for most of the movie and I know this is like a “he’s mean to everyone except her” kinda trope but even in the beginning he acts really weird in my opinion like him leaning towards Patty and asking her to take off her glasses and let down her hair like uh yeah not that’s not it man. The whole relationship between Simon and Patty really doesn’t get good until later on when they actually start bonding with each other like the arcade scene really was the magnum opus of the whole thing but besides that I don’t understand why the two would really be that into each other so quickly other than the fact they sort of already have a form of established connection through the love letters but even then Patty doesn’t know about this until a little later but obviously they couldn’t do too much because there’s only so much you can cram into a film like this. 

Another thing I don’t understand is the whole “punk” part of the film, if anything I don’t think it even plays that much of and a lot of it is presented through things like yelling at mostly innocent people in public who barely did anything, burning stuff down, taking revenge on bullies (this one is okay I guess), buying drugs, etc. Also apparently it’s sort of a twist that Simon in fact comes from a well off family although this isn’t to say that all punks have to come from working class backgrounds but it’s just this is something we find out about and is later never touched on again, same thing with Simon’s family because this quickly cuts to the concert sequence.

What else…oh yeah the slurs and excessive swearing. Now there’s been an argument on this whole thing like how it’s there for a purpose and the film’s not problematic blah blah blah you get the deal. For the most part it didn’t really catch me oft guard as I had already heard about it through some reviews I read beforehand but I did find it to be rather annoying like how many times are we going to hear the f swear being used in every sentence where it’s just not needed? It just feels too tryhard and edgy to the point it’s just utterly cringe to sit through. I get it, it’s the 90s or whenever this is supposed to be set in but it’s just not necessary especially when it doesn’t do anything to the plot or affect it in any way. It feels like it’s just there for the sake of it to be like “hey, people used to say bad words a whole lot back then”. For example at the beginning of the movie an old white guy uses the n word while he’s watching a sports game and it’s just like “???”. What was the point of that? Why was it there? 

The story is also lacking like it’s written like a Wattpad AO3 fanfiction, like yeah of course the singer Patty has been in love with for all this time is not only someone she used to know but is also now in her room right now and ends up falling in love with her like damn this is really some y/n stuff here we’re seeing but whatever, who cares cuz it’s “cute” right, absolute couple goals or whatever.

Now at this point you’re probably wondering if there’s anything I like about this movie at all and I guess there are a few although it’s rather limited. The humour is okay, it definitely has its moments but those usually don’t last long. The soundtracks pretty good, the song Watermelon (the one Patty and Simon made together) has nice instrumentals but my gosh the lyrics are just not it like what in the world does “music boyfriend I’m your yum yum” even mean? Huh? And it’s ironic because earlier on Simon calls her like a poet or something for writing these pop song worthy poems or whatever and she just decides to drop “like a tongue tongue, in my ear drum dumb”. Am I the only one not understanding what any of this is supposed to mean? Was this written in 5 minutes or something?

I quite like the indie feel of this film if anything, it feels nostalgic in a way if that makes sense but I also would very much understand why this didn’t really make it big back when it came out but I heard Kyle Gallner (the actor of Simon) has been negotiating with the people behind the film and stuff to get this featured on the big screens so let’s see if that’s a success I guess because I’m sure the Tiktok trend hoppers will be excited about that. 

All in all though these are mainly all my opinions and it’s okay to disagree with any of them if you do love this movie which is okay with me but I am curious to here any of your thoughts though either you have or haven’t seen Dinner In America. I wrote a shorter review summarising most of my thoughts on Letterboxd which you can find on my profile and besides that I hope you all have a lovely day.

-Statiscit